At Expatriate, Lowbrow Comfort Food Is Made Into Art and Highbrow Drinks Are Made Entirely of Booze

Dim, clubby cocktail bar Expatriate began as a jaunty side project to chef Naomi Pomeroy’s highbrow Beast across the street.

(Emily Joan Greene)

5424 NE 30th Ave., 503-867-5309, expatriatepdx.com. 5 pm-midnight Monday-Friday, 10 am-2 pm and 5 pm-midnight Saturday-Sunday.

Established: July 2013

Dim, clubby cocktail bar Expatriate began as a jaunty side project to chef Naomi Pomeroy's highbrow Beast across the street. In this colonial drinking den, it feels as if all the detritus of human culture has washed ashore and been made elegant. The waffle beneath your exquisite chili-butter fried chicken is made delicate with rice flour, while happy-hour fried-wonton nachos flatter your palate with lemongrass beef and a decadent "Thai chili cheese sauce" that pays homage to a world that never existed. Lowbrow comfort food is made into art, and highbrow drinks are made entirely of booze: It is a place where all culture seems flattened. Your bartender might ask you about the new book by a Swedish memoirist while pouring a mezcal cocktail called the Gazelle that both looks and tastes like pink clouds, swirling Combier liqueur with genever and hibiscus cardamom syrup. Meanwhile, a White Puma is as smooth as the shoe it describes, mixing Martin Miller gin with a pair of caramel amaros and an orange liqueur first made for Napoleon himself. Expatriate is the dream of the expatriate, an expansive ideal of civilization disappointed only when you exit and discover yourself back in the familiar, now bland-seeming streets of America.

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.